Early Plymouth, Mass. Marriages

I generally rely upon modern works to do research.  I've always figured that those compilations written after Jacobus tend to incorporate his style of scholarship.  So, I have been using (exclusively), The Vital Records of Plymouth, Massachusetts to the year 1850 by Lee D. van Antwerp and Ruth Wilder Sherman (Camden, Me.: Picton Press, 1993). I certainly remember when this first came out and how it was heralded.  It was odd that the first corporate entity in Massachusetts was among the last to have its own vital records published.  

Having said that I've recently discovered a cache of early marriages for Plymouth County starting in 1693 and running through the 1700s.  It was published in The Genealogical Advertiser 1 (1898):1 et seq. and republished twice more for its importance in the Mayflower Descendant 26:37 and Pilgrim Notes and Queries 3:121.  These marriages were interspersed in the records of the Inferior Court of Common Pleas at Plymouth.  Of the nine marriages attributed to Plymouth itself, three are not in the published Plymouth VRs.  The marriages are divided by town including Duxbury, Bridgewater, Middleboro, etc.  I haven't checked those other towns.

Those three marriages are:

• Joseph Bucland and Deborah Barrow 17 October 1693
• Hugh Cole Senior and Mary Morton Widow 30 January 1693/4
• John Dotey Senior and Sarah Jones 22 November 1694.

The last of these was picked by George E. Bowman and is included in the Mayflower information on the Doty Family.  Hugh Cole was marrying for the third time, a Mary (Shelley) (Harlow) Morton, twice a widow herself.  It's the first marriage that really caught my eye and has helped shaped the story of Deborah, wife now of John Barrows and then Joseph Buckland of Rehoboth, Mass.

Comments

[Marion Slack]

Wow, I cannot believe this. You have reached the same conclusions as I had about who Deborah Barrows was. Fortunately, for me you have more documentation than I do. I thought Deborah had remarried to Joseph Bucklin but I had confused the records for his first wife with those of Deborah (Pratt?) Barrows. Your estimates of Deborah's age etc match mine but you have a little more documentation--I did not have Ebenezer's birth record.
I am actually researching the William and Mary Slack family of Attleboro MA and had been investigating the Barrows family because John Slack, son of Wm & Mary, gave Joshua Barrows a half acre of land in Attleboro in 172?. Because people don't usually go around giving strangers land, I assumed that they must be related. Since I did not know Mary's maiden name, I thought she might be related to the Barrows. My theory is that Mary is the daughter of Benajah and Persis (Dunham) Pratt so she would have been Deborah's niece and Joshua Barrows would have been her cousin.
Again, I can't believe this.
Marion

[Martin Hollick]

Joshua Barrows's son Thomas married a Dorcas Slack at Attleborough on 14 October 1740. That would also be a family connection.